Conlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) was an influential American composer best known for his innovative studies for player piano, which showcased complex rhythms beyond human performance capabilities. Born in Texarkana, Arkansas, Nancarrow's early exposure to music began at the Western Military Academy and later advanced at the Cincinnati College Conservatory, where he first encountered Igor Stravinsky's work, igniting his interest in rhythm. After a stint in Europe and participation in the Spanish Civil War, he eventually settled in Mexico City, where he became a citizen and continued his compositional work in relative isolation. Nancarrow developed a unique musical language characterized by techniques such as ostinato, isorhythm, acceleration, and tempo canon, employing the player piano to explore these concepts. His later works integrated complex mathematical ratios and innovative notational methods, pushing the boundaries of rhythm in music. While initially overlooked, Nancarrow gained recognition in the late 20th century, influencing a generation of composers and earning accolades such as the MacArthur Foundation award. His legacy continues to inspire musicians and composers interested in rhythm and experimental music.
Subject Terms
Conlon Nancarrow
American classical composer
- Born: October 27, 1912
- Birthplace: Texarcana, Arkansas
- Died: August 10, 1997
- Place of death: Mexico City, Mexico
Nancarrow’s work with clashing tempi and rhythmic superimposition forged a radically new rhythmic language, redefining musical composition, especially for player piano.
The Life
Samuel Conlon Nancarrow (nan-KAHR-roh) was born in Texarkana, Arkansas, in 1912. He attended the Western Military Academy in Illinois, where he started playing trumpet, and he later went to the national music camp in Interlochen, Michigan. At Cincinnati College Conservatory (1929-1932), he first heard Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), which inspired him to explore complex rhythms in his own compositions. Although Nancarrow studied privately in Boston with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, and Nicolas Slonimsky from 1933 to 1936, he later described himself as an autodidact. While in Boston, Nancarrow joined the Communist Party.
In 1936 Nancarrow sailed to Europe, paying his passage by playing jazz trumpet, and in 1937 he enlisted in the Lincoln Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 he returned to the United States and moved to New York, where he read composer Henry Cowell’s New Musical Resources (1930), in which Cowell suggests that player pianos could be used to perform complex rhythms beyond the abilities of humans.
Increasing animosity in the United States toward Communists drove Nancarrow to relocate to Mexico City in 1940, and he became a Mexican citizen in 1955. He returned temporarily to New York in 1947 to buy a player piano and a piano-roll-punching machine. Nancarrow visited the United States for the first time in three decades in 1981, and he continued to reside in Mexico City until his death from heart failure in 1997.
The Music
Although Nancarrow did write some pieces for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and piano, his reputation is built on his astonishing studies for player piano. That his work could be based on one instrument and still show such vast variety is proof of his genius and diligence. Every piece explored a new aspect of his experiments in rhythm, and the rhythmic complexity of his early works soon outstripped any human’s ability to play them. The player piano turned out to be the ideal vehicle for Nancarrow’s creative expression.
The numbering of the fifty-odd studies is not entirely chronological, but they can be grouped according to the four main rhythmic ideas they present: ostinato, a phrase of rhythm and pitches repeated without variation; isorhythm, a repeated rhythmic phrase against a changing pitch sequence; acceleration, a gradual decreasing of the note values to change the speed of an individual line; and tempo canon, the technique with which Nancarrow is most identified. “Canon” in its original usage meant extended melody begun in the first voice, then strictly imitated in the following voices. Nancarrow adapted the concept to tempi, using it to play the same melody in different tempi simultaneously.
Ostinato Studies. Nancarrow’s earliest studies for player piano were based on ostinatos of different tempi and show a great deal of influence from the blues, in which ostinato bass serves as an important foundation. Study No. 3b was Nancarrow’s first to use a rhythm based on the golden mean, the ancient rule of aesthetic proportion. In this piece, the 5:3 ratio in the background rhythm imitates the swing feeling of blues musicians, humanizing the mechanical effect.
Isorhythm Studies. The early works reach a climax in Study No. 7, one of Nancarrow’s most contrapuntally intricate compositions. Melodically, it is relatively simple, with two main themes recurring throughout. This allows the listener to focus on the main structure, which is built on three isorhythms of different lengths, in the ratio 3:4:5. The influence of jazz can be heard in some of the harmonies and boogie-woogie patterns.
Accelerating Studies. Nancarrow’s most original compositional technique was acceleration (and its accompanying deceleration). There were no precedents in Western classical music: There was not even a way to notate it. Nancarrow used both arithmetical formulas (such as decreasing the duration of each note in a voice by one invariable unit) and geometrical formulas (such as decreasing each note by a percentage) to achieve his tempo effects. Study No. 8 was Nancarrow’s first acceleration experiment. It is notated without time signatures or bar lines, expressing the spatial relationships between the notes. It consists of four voices which alternately accelerate and decelerate according to strict arithmetical formulas. It is evident that Nancarrow was trying to approximate geometrical acceleration, which would not be possible until the 1950’s, when he acquired a punch that would accommodate atypical positioning of the holes. Study No. 21 was the first of Nancarrow’s logarithmically accelerating studies.
Tempo Canons. Nancarrow revived the medieval compositional tool of the canon, finding it the ideal method for structuring his experimental clashing tempi. Nancarrow’s earliest tempo canons featured the perceptible differences between the voices. His later ones, starting with Study No. 24, focused on the effect at what musicologist Kyle Gann calls the convergence point, where the voices catch up to each other. In these pieces, the tempo canon evolved into a new genre, creating musical effects never before heard. Nancarrow began to use extremely complex length ratios, such as the square root of two against two. Among these later canons, Study No. 36 best demonstrates the arithmetical properties that define the tempo canon.
Study No. 25. This is the first hybrid study, combining all the techniques and ideas Nancarrow had used thus far. With this piece, Nancarrow realized what was idiomatic to player pianos: the extreme speeds, dense flurries of notes, and lightning-fast glissandos. This understanding would inform the studies that followed.
Musical Legacy
Nancarrow remained largely unknown, composing in nearly complete isolation, until the period between 1977 and 1983, when Peter Garland started to publish his scores in the Soundings music journal and Charles Amirkhanian released recordings of the studies. Composer György Ligeti discovered a record of Nancarrow’s work in a shop in Paris and began disseminating the music among his fellow avant-garde composers. Soon, Nancarrow was being compared to such important mainstream classical composers as Anton von Webern and Charles Ives.
Nancarrow’s extremely intellectual approach to composition yielded music of great passion, and sometimes humor, and his constant challenging of rhythmic conventions created new ways of using and notating rhythm, innovative ways of thinking about the composition of music, and even expanded the definition of music itself. Composers who were influenced by Nancarrow include Ligeti, Elliott Carter, Harrison Birtwistle, John Adams, and James Tenney. Nancarrow received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation award in 1983.
Principal Works
chamber works:Sarabande and Scherzo, 1930 (for oboe, bassoon, and piano); Toccata, 1935 (for violin and piano); Septet, 1940; Trio No. 1, 1942 (for clarinet, bassoon, and piano); Piece No. 1, 1943; String Quartet No. 1, 1945; String Quartet No. 2, 1948; Piece No. 2, 1985; String Quartet No. 3, 1987; Trio No. 2, 1991 (for oboe, bassoon, and piano).
piano works:Blues, 1935; Prelude, 1935; Sonatina, 1941; Tango?, 1983; Two Canons for Ursula, 1989.
player piano works: Studies Nos. 1-30, 1960; Studies Nos. 31-37, 40-51, 1992; Contraption No. 1, 1993.
Bibliography
Bruce, David. “The Manic Mechanic.” The Musical Times 138, no. 1850 (April, 1997): 9-12. An exploration of the mechanical nature of Nancarrow’s music for player piano.
Carlsen, Philip. The Player-Piano Music of Conlon Nancarrow: An Analysis of Selected Studies. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1988. Analyses of selected studies for player piano. Includes introduction, footnotes, bibliography, and discography.
Duckworth, William. Talking Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. Includes an interview with Nancarrow and an index.
Gagne, Cole, and Tracy Caras. Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1982. Includes an interview with Nancarrow, index, and bibliography.
Gann, Kyle. The Music of Conlon Nancarrow. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Analyses of most of Nancarrow’s works, interviews with the composer, and biographical information. Includes notes, discography, selected bibliography, scores, and index.